#cheeramble

[cheeriely]

Uzi is such a gentle sweetheart I can't get over it. Feeling bad she got the bug crushed by accident, immediately fixing it with her solver, giving it a little salute even.. Trying to avoid stepping on it. Chatting with the keybug 🥹 She may try to act cool & come as off as abrasive but she constantly proves just how much she cares with her actions & behavior

[cheeriely]

The difference in how they take the lead is so cute. Uzi is SO passionate & firey, genuinely a core aspect of her character is how much she cares even if she tries to hide it behind layers of defensiveness & sarcasm, how passionate she is about her values & interests (did you see how excited she was to talk about her railgun?!?) you can see it in her expressions especially more after growing from her initial insecurities. N adores that about her so much & he makes sure to be her biggest cheerleader, & when N leads Uzi may look timid/shy because she isn't used to this kind of outward affection but he can clearly see shes still having a great time & lets her be at her own pace & never overshadows her. Duo of all time actually

[cheeriely]

I like to think of J & Tessa and N & Uzi as parallels. J & N are both loyal dogs, they just tend to exhibit this behavior & loyalty very differently - a ramble/analysis

starting with something I also always talk about - Tessa & Uzi are very simliar characters that I also view as parallels. Tessa digs up graves, fixes up worker drones from the dumpster, is looked down upon by her family & doesn't know how to interact with other humans.

Despite her limited screentime these few facts give us a lot of insight about her & what her life must've been like. This directly leads me to tie her to Uzi - who engineered a whole functional gun by herself, going out into a spire of corpses ready to risk her own life, & is generally also looked down upon by her peers & her father - they're both this very specific type of "weird girl" that fails to find belonging within her own kind, leading her to eventually sort this connection out elsewhere. That being drones for Tessa, & disassemblers for Uzi.

so back to N & J - I draw this comparison because something that stood out to me when I watched MD are J's interactions w/ Tessa. Shes almost never seen being this concerned for anyone else, which led to the belief that's why she choose to stay by cyns side til the end

And J's under-explored characterization & motives are a whole can of worms to talk about, but where I'm going w/ this is this strong, stubborn sense of loyalty is existent exactly within N too. He literally goes out his way to fetch uzi from space, & one of the only times we him genuinely yelling out in frustration + using panicked senseless strength is when he yells at uzi to use her solver when they think they lost V. The difference between how they translate this is N's loyalty makes him do the best for himself & the people he cares about, while J doubles down in hers that she becomes bitter & ends up destroying herself & the other people around her in the process. N isn't afraid to need people. J is. J is afraid of needing people the way she needed Tessa. Loyal dog until the very end.

And I like to think this is part of why she resented N so much. She saw herself in him almost except he so easily was everything she couldn't be - should've been - in her eyes he gets his happy ending while she's worked her entire life & ended up w/ nothing. bitter & envious until the end

[cheeriely]

Tessa & Uzi as narrative parallels - how their environments & rooms reflect this

A character's room is usually akin to a direct look into their mind life, interests, what they like, etc. We get such a glimpse at Tessa's & Uzi's. Though, we get to know uzi through the show- her personality, her identity, her presence, her values are LOUD in a way you cannot deny due to her rebel nature.

However we don't get to know Tessa in that same exact sense, not purely because of lack of screentime- but because of her living conditions, in a stuffed abusive mansion where she couldn't really be her true authentic self freely. So our biggest glimpses at who Tessa James Elliott was: the moments of her we do get to see, her interactions with her drones, and, her room.

Tessa was clearly one weird girl, this is not just presented through the literal skulls, potion bottles, occult-like imagery & pentagrams scattered throughout her room- she directly says to J "there's huuuumans coming" like she isn't a human herself, & she barely has a concept of "proper" social behavior among other people. While this must be partially contributed to her parents' abuse & neglect, one thing for sure is that Tessa is fucking weird. She clearly has an interest in the dead that doesn't only extend to digging graves, but also fixing busted-up drones & taking them in as her friends.

All this- Tessa's knack for collecting & digging graves, Uzi's room plastered in posters & her own collections, Uzi going to the corpse spire to pick up parts for her railgun, her engineering skills. Painted skulls on both of their walls, in different styles- Tessa's more traditional & occult-like, while Uzi's more futuristic & sharp, reflecting their personalities, interests, living environments & differences along with the similarities. I think people underestimate the importance of environmental design in world-building & characterization, because again, for as little as we directly knew Tessa we can tell so much about her & her life from her room alone, it is a direct look into who she was as a person, & the fact it heavily parallels Uzi's- the main character, reads to me as a very intentional choice that showcases Tessa's importance in the overall lore/narrative.

There are so many details you can pin as parallels between Uzi's & Tessa's rooms. The muted yellow/greenish hues contrast with Uzi's bright purple. Tessa's symbols & pentagrams, Uzi's blueprints & drawings of the solver/her ramblings, the pinned papers on the wall, the skulls, tally marks, their rooms being their personalized spaces in homes that never truly felt like their own.

Uzi drives the force of events of the present story we're given on copper-9, while Tessa's actions in the past are what kickstart the events back on earth- she's reason any of the drones & cyn were there in the first place. Tessa is not only simliar to Uzi for the sake of character + story parallels it's because she is also an integral part of the narrative & this is reflected through many things down to the designs of their rooms